Atari 2600 Lord of the Rings Discovered

TheAlchemist writes "Eighteen years ago a Lord of the Rings game appeared in a Parker Brothers catalog for the Atari 2600. Unfortunately, the game was never released, along with several other titles that appeared alongside it. Just in time for the first Lord of the Rings movie release next week, AtariAge.com has discovered a long lost prototype of this game, probably one of the most sought after 2600 vaporware titles. You can look at screenshots, a picture of the prototype box, the prototype cartridge, and download the binary image that you can then run in one of several Atari 2600 emulators. More information about the game can be gleaned here."

Comments

Re:Why?

[OmegaDan]

In the world of atari the development costs were almost 0, so the only real risk was manufacturing cartridges that wouldn't sell -- thus it was somewhat common for games to be made but unreleased.

From what I know, usually 1 person was contracted to write the game, usually for a few thousand dollars ... Remember there was no art to be done, no music to be written ... just 4k of code :)

There was also lots of money to be made for a good game. Rick Mauer, was paid 11,000$ to make Space Invaders for the 2600. The game grossed over 100 million dollars! (source: despair 2000 calander:)

Re:Blown away, already? We need a local cache!!!

[drinkypoo]

"I could try asking permission, but do you want to wait 6 hours for a cool breaking story while we wait for permission to link someone?"

Let's see, do I want to wait six hours for a story, or do I want the site to be down so I cannot actually get the details of the story? Hmm, this sure is a hard decision!